Ships & Modules

If you're mining in high sec use tech 1 mining barges or a skiff.

Most high sec orcas use the links:
Mining speed (more isk)
Mining range (ease of use)
More shield resists (harder to gank ships)

The other mining gang link is capicator use, but it's of minimal usefulness with a shield buffer tank. In null sec people use it because you can't use the shield harmonizing gang link while in a POS forcefield.

As far as fits go it depends on how you plan to use your orca. When I was mining I would generally leave it at a station for defense and easy docking. In this case 3 hull rigs, a bulkhead II, and a damage control II are pretty standard. Shield mods in the mids, or if you're moving a MWD for warp trick are good.

I generally avoid cargo expander lows and rigs, as these are just asking for your ship to get blown up.

The only reason not to run the shield harmonizer link is because your fleet has cap issues. Shield Harmonizer 1 is a lot quicker to train than Shield Harmonizer II. You want to get the Mining Foreman Implant to increase yield.

I've used a combination of prorators, retrievers and covetors depending on current security threat. You can keep whichever one you're not using in the ship maintenance bay and swap out as needed. You can use a Mackinaw but the retrievers are almost disposable if you don't have expensive implants in your miner. The retriever has more cap issues. The covetor/hulk is not an afk ship. I mostly used a covetor in asteroid anomolies when I wanted to clear it before the competition arrived.

For more AFK consider ice mining.

Did you do a Charisma remap for the orca alt? If so, consider going ahead and getting most of the leadership skills so you could put the alt in a command ship or T3 booster someday.


I don't use Macks much since I don't like spending the training time for exhumers but here's something:

[Mackinaw, Ore - Tank]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Mining Laser Upgrade II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Medium Shield Extender II
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II

Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I
Modulated Strip Miner II, Veldspar Mining Crystal I

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I


This has yield of 1025, 43.8 EHP against catalyst, and 79% cap stable without boost. Bulkhead rig doesn't seem to help on the Mack.

ill leave this and this here.
dont try to use one for a deterrent, they are in-fact big jucy incentives to hunt you.

Case in point : I considered kicking your corp up to the execs for a wardec so i could do so myself

best way to avoid getting ganked is to be at your keyboard.<------emphasis on the period

I dont have an orca boosting, so take this with a grain of salt, but I personally don't think keeping it in a belt is all that big of a deal. Pay attention and if a bunch of shady characters come into local, move it to station/pos. Keep a webbing ship in your orca so if you start getting bumped you have a better chance of getting away.

The one thing I will caution is don't forget that you lose your boost when warping the orca, so try to minimize the warping, and don't be further away from a rock than your lasers can reach without the orca, or you'll get nothing when it finishes :P Of course losing boost while warping the orca is still less of a loss than warping your miners, especially if you're not using a mack.

I've used an Orca with a 6 skiff ice-mining fleet and a freighter for hauling for about a year in a 0.6 system... only ships I've seen die were the occasional retriever and mack. Didn't take it out in belts but was in at least 2 ice-anoms a day for an hour or more.
What I'm trying to say is that if you have a nice and quiet system there isn't that much to worry about especially when you earn back the price of an orca in less than a week.

For AFK mining, use a Skiff.

If you're dead set on using the orca, then I would recommend hauling in it as well. But yeah, just training another miner would be better isk. You need something like 4 hulks for the orca to be worth more than just another miner?

Well I have double monitors, so one could be doing lvl 4 mission blitzing while the other mines, which I'm okay with. Also, if I decide to play other games on one monitor, on the other I can have mining going on in the background in a low populated system which would make me more isk if I wasn't playing EvE anyway. Also I do manufacturing on the side here and there to make more isk which mining helps decreasing the cost of ore since I have a character with really good reprocessing skills.

So is it worth it to have an Orca just boost the miner in the background and get more yield per hour than I would without the Orca? Because primarily that is what I'm aiming for to make more isk, but also still mine.

I don't know why but mining just gives me satisfaction for whatever reason...

-Maykid

If your plan involves mining in high sec, you need a new plan.

Couple of tips to use when mining in high sec.

1) Pick a empty/low population system and watch local. IIRC the best ore was to scordite/veldspar for money anyways so you don't really need that low of a system sec.

2) Use dead space shield amps/shield buffer. They're cheap as chips and provide a great buffer. My hulks were ungankable by anything less then 3 catalysts in a .5 system. Also, ignore survey scanner. Use the extra mid slot for more tank.

A fit I used was something like this:
Hulk-
3x strip miners II
2x gist c-type kinetic amps
2x gist c-type thermic amps
2x mlu II

1x cpu rig
1x shield extender rig

It came to around 20k+ ehp vs kin/therm. I think you need a +3 or +5 cpu implant, can't remember. You could use another cpu rig but you wouldn't have as much tank.

3) An Orca is a great tool to keep in a belt while mining.

a) It's a place to store your ore

b) You can store a brick tanked miasmos inside the ship maintenance array to haul your ore. When the Orca's full one of your miners just switches to hauling to empty it out. Continous mining! It's also important that it's brick tanked because....

c) If your miner is getting ganked and the tank will fail. Have that miner jump into the brick tanked Miasmos, thereby storing your hulk into the Orca and granting you free Concord provided loot. Please note this will ONLY work if you do NOT have an weapons timer or get bumped off your orca. So either keep your sec status green or turn off aggressive status on your drones.

d) If they bring enough dps to pop your Orca unless your blind or really not paying attention. You WILL see that local spike. After all, your following rule #1 yes?